


if you go out tonight

by demiromcom (mayerwien)



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Drinking, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-19 08:34:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17597891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayerwien/pseuds/demiromcom
Summary: “Okay,” Chase says, leaning back in his chair. “I’ve got one. Fuck marry kill—Julia Roberts, Nicole Kidman, Michelle Pfeiffer.”“Easy. Kill Michelle, fuck Julia, marry Nicole,” Cameron replies, ticking them off on her fingers.“Easy?” asks Foreman incredulously.“It’s only difficult for you because you want to fuck everybody,” Cameron smirks.“I do not want to fuck everybody,” Foreman mutters into his beer.





	if you go out tonight

**Author's Note:**

> grumbles incoherently

“Okay,” Chase says, leaning back in his chair. “I’ve got one. Fuck marry kill—Julia Roberts, Nicole Kidman, Michelle Pfeiffer.”

“Easy. Kill Michelle, fuck Julia, marry Nicole,” Cameron replies, ticking them off on her fingers.

 _“Easy?”_ asks Foreman incredulously.

“It’s only difficult for you because you want to fuck everybody,” Cameron smirks. She leans forward with her elbows on the table, lacing her fingers together and lightly resting her chin on top of them.

“I do not want to fuck everybody,” Foreman mutters into his beer.

The bar is fairly crowded this time of night, full of pleasant smoky smells wafting out from the kitchen, and cheers and shouts of outrage from the patrons watching the game on the TV screen. Cameron’s always liked coming here for drinks with Foreman and Chase, sitting at the exact same table every time—it makes her feel warm, and cozy, and just a little less responsible.

“My turn,” Cameron says, then looks casually up at the ceiling as though she’s still thinking of a question, even though she’s had a question tickling the inside of her chest cavity ever since they started this game. “Okay. Fuck marry kill, hmm…House, Cuddy, Wilson.”

Foreman snorts. “Uh, I think we all know what _your_ answer is.”

“I’m _over him,”_ Cameron says. Actually, she kind of yells it. She probably shouldn’t have finished her drink as fast as she did.

Foreman is chuckling. “Sure you are.”

“I’m serious. I’d kill House, fuck Cuddy—stop _picturing_ it, god, you are such _children,”_ Cameron groans, as Foreman and Chase exchange one of their gross wiggly-eyebrow looks. “And marry Wilson,” she ends lamely.

“Oh, come on. I refuse to believe you wouldn’t do House at least once,” Foreman says, still grinning.

“No,” Cameron insists hotly, even though she sort of kind of imagined it more than once in the past, especially after she saw what the inside of his apartment looked like. “I wouldn’t.”

“I would,” Chase replies matter-of-factly.

Cameron and Foreman both stare at him.

Chase shrugs. “What? I mean yeah, he’s annoying as hell, but I think we’d have some really good hate sex. And then I’d marry Cuddy, and—sorry, Wilson, you die by default.”

“Aww,” Cameron says, to steer the topic away from hate sex with House. “You’d marry Cuddy?”

“Well, yeah, why not?” Chase turns his perfect sunbeam face in her direction, and there’s something burning soft in his eyes, in a way that suddenly makes Cameron feel—not uncomfortable, exactly, but self-conscious. “I like a strong, smart woman,” he says simply.

Cameron rolls her eyes at him. “That doesn’t mean the strong, smart women like you,” she says.

“The nine-year-old ones sure do,” Foreman jokes, and then they’re all laughing.

 

The next time they go to the bar together, House joins them.

He doesn’t ask, or walk out of the hospital with them, or anything like that. He just shows up, after they’re already seated and through with their first round of drinks. Cameron is sitting on the sofa facing the door, so she sees him out of the corner of her eye as soon as he comes in; she’s so familiar with his gait it’s like she’s attuned to it, like if he’s anywhere in her radius she’ll find him even though she wasn’t looking for him at all.

Cameron’s always wished there was a verb other than _limp,_ for the way House moves. _Limp_ sounds like something small and sorry, and House is always anything but sorry. When he walks, it’s like he’s using his cane to propel himself down the hallway or across the room—laboriously and painstakingly, but with his eyes firmly fixed on a point B. Determined to get there, so he can get on with whatever needs to be done.

“Hey,” House says, eyes not quite meeting any of theirs. He sucks his breath in and drums his fingers on his cane handle. “Room for one more?”

They all stare. “Yeah,” Chase manages first, gesturing to the empty chair across from Cameron. “Yeah—of course.” House nods, in a thank-god-that’s-over way, hooks the chair leg with his cane and pulls it out, lowering himself into it.

There’s a brief, confused silence, during which Cameron is fairly sure they’re all thinking the same thing—that the reason why they come here is so they can get drinks and bitch good-naturedly about House, but now that House is _here,_ they have no idea what to talk about.

“Nice to have a night off every once in a while,” Foreman says first. “No patients in critical condition we’re actively worrying about…”

“Yep,” House says, popping the P. He looks around, his gaze flicking from the TV to a group of women seated at the bar to the bartender polishing glasses.

“And nice, er,” Chase attempts to add valiantly, “weather. The weather’s been fantastic.”

House wrinkles his nose. _“This_ is what I skipped out on monster trucks with Wilson for? I’ve had more interesting conversations with coma patients.”

Chase looks helplessly at Cameron, who looks helplessly back. Foreman just rolls his eyes and says, “House, if you don’t want to be here…”

“No, no, I wanted to. Needed to fill my inane small talk quota for the week. But now since you’ve all filled it for the year, I’m gonna go get a drink.” House gets up.

“I’ll go with you,” Cameron says, since her glass is empty—but House stops her and says, “I got it. What are you having?”

“Um,” Cameron says, feeling her brain stutter. “I—just—an apple martini?”

House doesn’t make any snarky comments about her drink choices, just nods again and heads towards the bar, leaving his cane leaning against the edge of the table.

As soon as he’s gone, Foreman gives a little huffy laugh and shakes his head. “Can you say Twilight Zone?”

“I think it’s sweet,” Chase pipes up. “He’s trying to hang out with us.” Cameron says nothing, just exhales and tucks her hands underneath her thighs, pressing her palms against the cracked leather of the sofa seat.

It’s not long before House comes back, moving slowly, with a glass in each hand. There’s something about him having gotten her drink for her that feels strangely intimate, that Cameron doesn’t know how to explain.

“Your girly juice. Cheers,” he says as he sets it down in front of her, and Cameron simultaneously rolls her eyes at him and feels herself relax, because there’s the House they all know and tolerate.

Then Foreman and Chase get up for their own refills, abandoning Cameron to face House alone. There’s an old blues song playing; a rich, full voice singing and a harmonica honking along. Cameron happens to glance at House then, and sees an expression pass across his face—but it’s not the brief, tense flicker associated with pain. It’s more thoughtful, almost serene.

“Is it the song?” Cameron asks.

House glances at her in surprise. “What?”

“The song.” Cameron indicates the speaker above their heads. “Ever since it started playing, you’ve almost been smiling. Real smiling, too, not like, leering.”

“I don’t leer,” House informs her. “Leering is what lecherous old men do.”

Cameron raises an eyebrow.

“Okay, point taken.” The corner of House’s mouth twitches upward. “This is Muddy Waters,” he says, shifting in his seat so he’s leaning slightly across the table in her direction. “Father of modern Chicago blues. The song’s called ‘Two Steps Forward’…I grew up listening to this.”

“I like it.” Cameron tilts her head, listening. “Though I’m more of a Nina Simone girl, myself.”

House looks at her—and then keeps looking at her, tipping his chin up and narrowing his eyes slightly, the way he does when he’s coming to a conclusion about something. Cameron is suddenly aware of how small the table is; that even with it between the two of them, he’s sitting fairly close. “Well, aren’t you just full of surprises,” he murmurs.

Cameron shrugs, taking a sip of her martini. “I wasn’t trying to manic-pixie-dream-girl you or anything,” she says. “I also really like Green Day and M2M, so.”

House smiles wider.

“How—many instruments do you play?” Cameron asks. She’s been curious for a while; he’s been parking his guitar in his office so he can pluck broodily at it while he’s thinking, and when he’s particularly euphoric after having solved something he shreds on it until Cuddy comes up and yells at him.

“Ha.” House leans back and drinks his bourbon; he takes it neat, Cameron notices. “Guitar, piano, harmonica…a little saxophone, but I’m probably rusty since I don’t own one.”

“God. And you chose to go into _medicine.”_

“Being plagued daily by the absolute barrel-scrapings of humanity is way more fun than making music. I’m sure your bleeding heart agrees.” He pauses, clicking his tongue. “Although, you just gave me an idea. A good saxophone costs, oh…three hundred dollars? Yeah, Wilson’ll lend me that, easy.”

Cameron shakes her head, and then looks through the crowd; Chase and Foreman are on their way back. “Hey,” Cameron says, and House looks at her. “It’s nice that you’re here,” she tells him.

“Oh, god.” House rolls his eyes and finishes his bourbon. “And it was going so well, before you decided to get all soppy.”

**Author's Note:**

> this isn't substantial at all i'm sorry, i just didn't want to let it fester in my drafts. like, there's more of it, but it's not finished and idk how to, so i just have it, and you get the part of it that's the most presentable. maybe one day i'll learn how to...finish my sentences


End file.
